Sequential Lighting display Project

I am brainstorming a project for a museum that depicts a path on a mural that settlers or whatever would've taken. The path would utilize LEDs along point A to point B. The LEDs would light up one by one when triggered along the path. When the path was reached, the would all remain lit for a few seconds and then start over once triggered.

I have done similar projects using shift registers with success. The only hiccup with this project is that there could potentially be 100+ LEDs to control/address individually. I would hate to have to wire up 17 or so 8-bit shift registers to do the job.

Does anyone have another ideas regarding this?

Thanks....

Use a micro controller.

Sorry, I guess I should've been more specific. I am already planning on using a Parallax controller. My question was more directed at the driving of LEDs. I plan on shifting out data to shift registers capable of driving the LEDs right now. But didn't know if there was a better way. This way would require a bunch of shift Registers.

How many pins is your controller?

The Maxim MAX7219 can drive 64 leds per chip communicating via three wires and are cascadable; the MM5451 from Micrel (formerly a National Semi product) can drive 35 leds per chip communicating via two wires (non-cascadable).